I learned of the sad passing of Professor Harry Neumann. He was a long-time teacher of political philosophy at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate University in California. He was my teacher.
When I was graduating from college, I had no idea what to do. I went to my friend and advisor, Paul Basinski, and told him I wanted to keep learning around thoughtful, serious people interested in reading serious books. I knew enough to know those types are rare, even in academics.
Paul told me about Claremont and the two Harrys: Harry Jaffa and Harry Neumann. Jaffa, he said, is the greatest living defender of the natural law, while Neumann is the only intellectually honest nihilist. He said that going to Claremont and studying with them would be the closest thing to studying with a living Socrates and Nietzsche. He was right.
Harry Neumann was the best scholar and teacher of Nietzsche I’ve ever known. He was excellent in the technical, academic sense of teaching. He’d sit with his beaten up, worn out texts in the original German, usually held together with tape and rubber bands, and the English versions assigned to those of us who are language-challenged, explaining the nuances lost in translations.
He’d do the same with Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and many others. It seemed as if there was not a significant thinker whose works he had not mastered. But he offered so much more. In the case of Nietzsche, in particular, it seemed like he could think Nietzsche’s thoughts as well as if not better than did Nietzsche. Harry Neumann truly was a model of his teacher, Leo Strauss, helping students understand an author as the author understood himself.
It is impossible to describe the mind of Harry Neumann by reference to some book, or writer, or sect. He was not a Nietzschean. Nor was he an Aristotelian. Nor would any religious group likely claim him as one of theirs—his relentless philosophic inquisitiveness rubbed modern piety the wrong way. But he was an American. And he was a thinking mind trying to discover truth. He was a thinking mind’s mind. He was Professor Neumann.
For those of us who paid attention, Professor Neumann showed the real human impossibility of an amoral world that consists of nothing but power and…nothingness. He confronted thinkers of all stripes, liberals and conservatives of all kinds, and showed that their nihilism, whether wrapped in nihilistic multiculturalism or pious faith in gods of arbitrary willfulness, cannot support any political cause, because nothing cannot support any notion of right.
Not long after the shooting of students by the National Guard at Kent State University in 1970, anti-war student protests in Claremont were quickly escalating in violence. Buildings were being set on fire and a package bomb maimed for life a secretary when she opened it. The Claremont Colleges called an emergency faculty meeting. They were worried that the National Guard would be called out and they did not want the massacre that happened at Kent State to be repeated in Claremont.
In the midst of the hand-wringing and moralizing, Professor Neumann stood to remind the faculty that as academics most of them peddled nihilism in one form or another, explicitly or esoterically, to their students. No truth, no right, just moral nothingness. Wearing his nihilist mask, he congratulated them, but asked why they cared if students were shot. Did they, after all, think that shooting students was…WRONG? Did not a moral wrong imply the existence of some moral right?
The faculty and so-called “intellectuals” dismissed him as a crank, or crazy. But Professor Neumann cut to the moral core of the matter: If there is no right and no wrong, if there is no truth, there should be no cause for concern about…anything! All he was asking is that the “intellectuals” be intellectually honest about it. But if there is a right and a wrong, then they should stop advocating their nihilism and become intellectually honest enough to investigate what right and wrong truly are, what truth is. THAT was Professor Neumann’s point. THAT is real education. And I am proud to call myself his student.
Professor Neumann peered deeply into nothingness like no other I have known. But as he looked at nothing, I think he saw something. His nihilistic façade scared away the more timid, perhaps rightly so. And like any great, rare thinking mind, he had a way about his thoughts and his speech and his writing. It took considerable effort to delve into the depths of his way and make sense of it. But for those who had the courage to hear him out, and the energy to work and think alongside him, the rewards of insight were infinite. He helped serious students see the darkness of nothing, but in turn that helped them to better see and appreciate the light of truth. If it is true that one cannot know dark without knowing light, so too is the opposite.
Professor Neumann saw, and helped others see, the eternal conflict between theological politics (and all politics is theological, as he demonstrated daily in his classes) and philosophy. If all politics is grounded in some confident knowledge about right and truth — and all political advocates are confident of the truthfulness and rightness of their cause, be they Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, Communists or Nazis, feminists or environmentalists or multiculturalists or Islamists or Jews or Christians or whatever — then the questioning ways of philosophy must be problematic for politics.
Philosophy cannot avoid a quarrel with politics. Nay, philosophy IS a quarrel with politics, because philosophy questions the very things politics holds to be unquestionable. All philosophy, therefore, ultimately is political philosophy. And that is also why so little that is taught in academic departments of “philosophy” is worthy of its name.
No scene in the history of human drama better illustrates the conflict between politics and philosophy than the trial and execution of Socrates. What was the main charge against Socrates? Not merely breaking the law, but more importantly, impiety, something pious Athenians could not and would not tolerate. Piety was not merely mandated by the law, it was the ground upon which the authority of the law rested. The philosophizing of Socrates was seen by Athenians as nothing less than a mortal attack upon and undermining of their sacred law and political authority. That is why Professor Neumann spent the better part of his career trying to understand that mysterious Greek, perhaps the only real philosopher ever to live.
Professor Neumann helped students of politics understand the true, real, primordial ground of politics, always and everywhere. He helped students of philosophy understand the genuinely radical nature of philosophy. And he helped some understand the intrinsic, always problematic relationship between the two. For that, I thank him.
Professor Neumann is gone. It feels like the world is smaller today for it. I miss him and I am sad. But his memory and legacy shall not die. His name and his way of helping others learn to think will survive so long as his students, and the students of his students, remember what they learned from him and share with others. However inadequate my abilities, I shall try to do my part in honor of him. Farewell, Professor Neumann.
Thank you for this. Very intriguing.
I had the opportunity to meet Professor Neumann once and to hear him in class on a few occasions. I certainly had no idea what he was driving at at the time but I remember the dog-eared copy of Kaufmann’s “Portable Nietzsche” with its distinctive blue cover which he had to hand.
I subsequently read no small number of his articles, the first being the one on Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” which I have turned to on a number of occasions. Rarely does one see the broader philosophical implications of a work of art so fully brought to light as in this essay. I also read Professor Neumann’s “Liberalism” collection which has some fascinating insights into modern literature as well as a number of renditions of his foundational “Either/Or” proposition – either Politics/Religion/Morality or “Take Off and Die” (to speak colloquially).
Professor Neumann’s review of Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” struck me as an efficient statement of the way in which an “intellectual” is distinct from a purely political creature on the one hand and a genuinely philosophical mind on the other. I should imagine that to be a student at Claremont in recent decades has precisely involved sitting “betwixt and between” these two human poles in the sense of having “Objective” and “Absolute” Morality on the one side in the form of Professor Jaffa and “Subjective” and “Skeptical” Nihilism on the other in the form of Professor Neumann – with no crutches available in the intervening space. No situation could be more “existential” and therefore more enlightening in the true sense of the term.
We shall not see an uncompromising nihilist like Professor Neumann come our way again any time soon which is only to be lamented given that the tide of fanatical absolutist relativism and dogmatical skepticism seems to be rising every day in our liberal society. The only way out of this bind it seems to me is to indicate to people that “If you take this nihilo-relativist stand to which you seem so attached, then by extension you are unable make your favorite moral claims without the most evident and demeaning self-contradiction.” Professor Neumann was tireless in making this point to all and sundry and for this we should all be grateful. RIP Professor Neumann. – D.H.
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Thank you for posting this. It’s a little surprising to know that his class in early years seem to be organized more…tight. When I have seminar with him, his talks were more like a well cleaned crime scene. All scattered clues (usually in the form of a single sentence in the middle of some big book) are casually presented by Prof Neumann, yet he wouldn’t show how to connect them together to make some sense. It was a splendid sport for mind. I took Prof. Neumann’s class for three semesters in a row from 2007 to 2008 only trying to figure out what he meant by “the unwinnable war between the political and the philosophical.” I sat in his seminar again for a couple of times early this year, and his riddle-like teaching was even more concise and no less fascinating. “Now everybody has his philosophy. Last night in the television there was an ad about the philosophy to make one’s hair pretty.” Maybe he’s already started to use this little satire since 1970s? 🙂 Before I met him, I didin’t even know how to spell Nietzsche. I thank Prof Neumann for introducing me to political philosophy. Wish I could have met him decades earlier. Again, thank you for letting me know what he was like in his early years.
I am very sorry to hear that Prof. Neummann has passed away. Perhaps he will meet God or at least find out why there is something and not nothing.
I never took a class from him, but had many conversations with him as he was a regular visitor to the Honnold Mudd Library where I worked as a graduate student.
I remember one time being at some dinner and Harry and Harry were sitting on either side of me asking me, essentially, why there was something Harry J and or was there nothing, Harry N. Looking back on it, I think they saw it as a way of academic fun, but at the time it seemed like that no PhD defence could be as difficult.
I do remember a time though that was serious and that was when there was a conference on Modern Freedom at Claremont in 1996 where Harvey Mansfield attended. At that conference, I recall one session where Harry N. had a very intense discussion with another leading academic, no less learned, and all the students were spell bound. There were no other questions as the audience sat with rapt attention as they explored the history of western philosophy challenging each on the meaning of modern freedom. Today, it is rare to see that level of discussion but that was an amazing conference with some amazing teachers.
I read Neummann’s Liberalism regularly just as I read Harry Jaffa’s work because the question why is there something and not nothing gets to the heart of so many of our political questions. Alas, with atheism being so popular and misunderstood, the effect of Harry Neumann seems to have worn off. Until you start to ask what is right and wrong and why, then you start to see whether Libralism is real.
He leaves behind an important legacy, which is under appreciated outside of the Claremont community. If more students had to wrestle with the insights of his book Liberalism, I think we would have stronger critical thinking skills and people would see why Harry Jaffa needs to be read.
Thanks for a wonderful summary of Professor Neumann.
I had the happy opportunity to take the Socrates or Nihilism class team taught by Professors Neumann and Jaffa. I do not know anyone who did not note that it was the best class they had ever taken.
I never understood Nietzsche before that class, though my philosophy professors were uniformly excellent; a trait at Claremont. It was Professor Neumann who really explained to me, and the entire class, the reality and repercussions of a life where there is no God, no non arbitrator of morality.
I had the honor of Professor Neumann referring to me as “ridiculous.”
It seems odd to say Rest In Peace to a true nihilist, so I will just quote Professor Jaffa, giving the highest praise I could ever think of. “No one knows Nietzsche better than Neumann.”
I just did a Google search and came across this. I took several classes with Professor Neumann and he impacted my approach to both scholarship and life in profound ways for which I am sad I will never get to properly thank him. He was the only professor I ever knew of that held class during spring break (I attended).
After reading his book and his essay on nihilism, I wrote to Professor Neumann. He replied by extensively quoting Professor Jaffa. He expressed no personal position. I thought that strange. But, then I concluded that it was not strange for a professor who believed in nothing.
On professor Neumann; source: http://www.city-journal.org/html/how-my-friends-and-i-wrecked-pomona-college-14331.html
“Remember our senior year,” asks Loewen, “when Nixon bombed Cambodia and it was like there was no greater event in the history of mankind? And the faculty voted to close down all the campuses?” I remember. In fact, a group of us occupied the ROTC building and, in what we thought of as a delightful irony, spent the whole night playing Risk, the game of world conquest. “Well,” continues Loewen, “there’s something that has really stuck with me. There was a young philosophy professor at Scripps—he later moved to Claremont Graduate School—named Harry Neumann, who I heard was still holding class that day. He was jeopardizing his whole career doing this, taking the risk of being denied tenure, so a couple of us headed over there. It was a seminar on Nietzsche, and in addition to its nine or ten students, there were 40 or 50 others hanging around the walls of this little room. What he was discussing was indecipherable to me, but finally he looked up, acknowledging that all these other people were around. And he said: ‘At the faculty meeting yesterday, somebody asked me when, if ever, I would close the university. And I told him: When all the answers to all the important questions have been found, then it would be appropriate to close the university. And for all the people who have all the answers to all the important questions, the university is already closed.’ ”